With the whole gambling ruckus down below, M. was saying something like, you know, it’s a religious school and his kids probably go there and so he’s worried about gamblling.

I kept laughing about his insistence on “religious” equaling no gambling. I mean damn, I have never met a Catholic would minded a little gambling (or drinking or dancing or card playing). Ever hear of Bingo Night? So I Google’d the an authoritative answer.

As I suspected, as long as you ain’t slipping on a condom it’s all fun.

M. went out for a ride today.

Much later we went for a walk back to the local Catholic school carnival. Loves me a carnival. Whee!

Controversy erupted. Just when we were enjoying the home-towned-ness, this dude got into a shouting match with someone running the show. We caught, “This is bullshit. There’s gambling. I know my rights…” Something like that. He then wandered around wielding his cell phone camera as a righteous tool of documentation.

The guys circling him tailed behind his document in a line.

We gathered he was upset, because this fundraising carnival for the school’s building fund was featuring gambling in the form of this “Pan 2” game. The deal was that you could throw down 10 cents to 2 bucks on colored squares, then a ball would randomly roll onto the colors and you’d win on a color match with various odds and payoffs. I think the guy’s chain got yanked, because teenage boys and girls circled the booth tossing their money down.

Afterall, right next store there was a thing called “Cherry Bells” that I ain’t never heard of with something like a scratch ticket, where you pull out some prize winning tabs. Prominently, that booth said you had to be all growed up and past 18 years to buy something like this here for 50 cents.

He was ranting about gambling and church and his school and his kids.

So, they wrestled him on out of there, of course.

And, Mayberry RFD, where we now live, had itself a little bit of excitement. (You know you be living in a small town, when you head out to such a carnival as we did last night, and the peace officer who took your stolen bike complaint a couple months before recognizes you and says, “Hey” and shoots the shit.)

Keep it moving.

So far, the weekend’s highlight was wonderful but at such a low scale, I have to wonder about my low expectations.

Last night on the way to dinner, M. stopped to pick up a new pair of glasses from the crappiest Lens Crafters in town. Clearly not an establishment that thrives on service.

I was mildly irked, because I was hungry. And because M. can fade into completely unwarranted, irrational impatience when he’s looking for dinner, and I have an errand to run. My fantasy relationship involves no irritation whilst the other guy farts around. Or more specifically, a huge fucking swath of leeway if I’m not ready yet.

So, when I have to wait for him, I dramatically like to up the stakes of injustice in the relationship. Who wouldn’t want to live with me?

Anyway, to right the perceived wrong with a little quid pro quo after moving our dinner reservations back a half hour, I decided I needed moisturizer. I couldn’t live another second without some attempt to moisten the flaky ankles I had discovered while waiting for the Lens Crafters staff to deign provide service.

I decided to look in the back of the Staples next door. After all, what doesn’t an office supply superstore say other than moisture and beauty products?

In the back with the bulk liquid soap for office toilets, I found joy. Not just moisturizer but Aveeno, which suits my sensitive, baby-like, allergic self.

I was already thrilled to the core of my being with the mere prospect of buying my bottle of moist. I was shivering and gladly willing to fork over as much as $7 for the feeling of smooth, youthful skin. (I’d pay even more to actually feel smooth, youthful skin, if you know what I mean.)

The lottery win, the cherry on my sundae, the denouement, the thrill, the orgasm was yet to be, though. Nope, that came at the cash register when the smiling young man scanned by elixir bottle and remarked himself at the price, expressing envy.

It was 50 cents plus tax for a grand total of $0.54. How fucking awesome is that? And, how fucking sad am I for wallowing for 24 hours in that ecstacy?

A friend of ours found a useful reason to ride bikes around. I kind of miss being 12 when you didn’t need a reason to ride bikes around.

(By the way, I never actually figured I’d move cross country and make friends. I was kind of counting on grumpy hermit in the sun.)

Check out this website right here: http://events.ggbreathe.org/goto/Dee-Rob.

Go ahead and give some money in my name. At some dollar point I’ll get a T-shirt for fundraising. After that, some kind of jersey and a cap. A cap, no doubt, that will make me look special ed like.

I might try to raise money. Or, I might just write a check and get some of the swag. But, sick lungs suck. Asthmatic kids suck. Air quality should not suck. So, hey, it’s a good cause.

And, there’s my ass size. Root for that whilst I ride 18 miles with my sane-ish friends, and M. rides 62 with the crazy folks.

Last night was pretty fucking fun. My first ever major league baseball game in a place that was not Fenway Park. Nope, we were seated in Oakland’s McAfee Coliseum watching the A’s eventually beat the Red Sox. Sadly, we lost, but it was an 11inning game, and fun to watch.

It was M.’s first ever major league event. Not sure if he was more impressed by the roar of the crowd or the available barbecue.

Fucking Red Sox, though, are now two games down in this series with the A’s. It’s probably because I’m paying attention.

In news, I just want to congratulate Fox News on it’s ability to confuse older, African American congressman. Way to fucking go on that tape run, I know that the upstanding Representative Conyers, who ain’t been indicted, really digs your sense of humor.

Better yet, seems kind of poetic that they’ve wasted no time in selling a “junior member of our library staff” down the river.

Also, speaking of being sold down the river, gotta give a big old shout out to Scooter Libby. I’m sure President Bush will feel just terrible when the iron doors lockdown Scooter’s life. Maybe Paris Hilton can give him some tips on doing time.

As much as our current government sucks major and proverbial ass, a little bit of a side note that’s actually on the serious side. The world is a fucked up place, and maybe on account of our president’s ludicrous sense of foreign relations, it ain’t getting nicer in some garden spots.

Through the day job, I heard about this man and this website. Please take a look and maybe sign the petition and think about Tehran in 2007.

http://freekian.org/

Got a bit of writing in this afternoon after storming the remains of the farmers’ market. I can’t live without my fresh fruit from the breadbasket or heartland or some such compound word that equals West Coast agriculture. We arrived as tents were being torn down and boxes thrown into the backs of pickups, but I got me some strawberries and we some apricots.

Writing on the balcony is a lovely writerly room. I keep my camera by my side.

One of the visuals of Cali that occasionally causes me pause is the diversity. Ethnically, racially, creed-ily, whatever flavor or color, globalization hits the old doorstop.

Even the goddamn squirrels ain’t just one kind of gray, fuzzy rat. Nope, they got ’em in the trees, in the ground, burrowing through grasses. And, they are colored, they are. Gray, red, brown and black and some ghostly albinos somewhere in some genetic anomaly somewhere, I’m sure. A squirrel Benetton commercial, a rainbow.

This guy would have stood out in my lily-white suburban hometown that featured just common gray.

M. and I went separate ways on separate bikes today. He was off to change his seat to some teenie sliver of aerodynamic leather and get in a decent distant bike ride. My ambitions were far less athletic.

The City of Palo Alto sponsored a bunch of its locals to simultaneously have yard sales. I figured weaving in and out of residential neighborhoods examining the fine citizens’ junk was a fabulous use of my afternoon.

Sadly, I bought nothing. I was tempted by an old-school, beige rotary phone for a buck. I should have snatched it. But, the Radio Shack, cord-splicing project required to rewire it to a modern day phone port seemed like just the thing I would have done when I was single and fancy free. Not leaving junk around for future crafty projects at some indefinite time, though, is exactly the kind of sacrifice one makes in the civil society of coupledom. Sigh.

Other than that, folks have sorted out that old dishes are “collectible.” For me, that means the blue willow single saucer that should have been 50 cents was $4. Fuck you market forces.

The sad part of my yard saling ambitions was not seeing the dude with the giant, monster paparazzi lenses and press pass until after I slammed the brakes for a sale. It is now entirely possible that I, in my bike-helmeted, dorky glory, will be part of a garage-sale photo essay in the Palo Alto Daily News.

The price of a fucking free press.